The fluids contained in plants are often a valuable commodity. For example, hash oil is a valuable fluid extraction taken from parts of a cannabis plant. Conventionally, the extraction of hash oil from cannabis is time consuming and dangerous. Hash oil may be obtained, for example, by using a solvent to extract the oils from the plant parts where the solvent is evaporated from the mixture of oil and solvent after extraction. Exemplary solvents include butane, benzene, methanol, petroleum, to name but a few solvents. Even after evaporation, however, the extracted oil is often contaminated with some residual solvent.
Another type of extraction uses carbon dioxide as the solvent, which is commonly referred to as supercritical carbon dioxide extraction. Using supercritical carbon dioxide to extract the oils includes, among other things, pumping carbon dioxide through the plant matter at a high pressure. Once the desired product is removed, the pressure is released and the carbon dioxide evaporates. While natural, some level of residual carbon dioxide typically remains behind, which contaminates the oil product.
Thus, against this background, it would be desirable to provide a system and method of extracting oils or fluids from plant parts, and more particularly, oils from cannabis plant parts.